My ankle is shackled, and I cannot for the life of me remember when it happened, only that it’s connected to yours. It is so very long that I could walk to the edge of the earth while you stood still without feeling a constraint in the slightest. But I would look down and it would never not be present.
I used to think they had an art to it, some craftsmanship, an explanation as to why they were universally wanted, as if they were simply pretty anklets. It’s as if I just stood still long enough looking, preoccupied by my translation ineptitude, long enough for liquid to solidify and to have myself bound and adjacent.
Shackles have definitions, I tend to pick apart, something that usually gets me out of said shackles, but ours doesn’t, and it’s suffocating to know that you’re content being bound when I’m freaking out. When I bring that up you say, worry not, it stretches.
It’s not even there, not really, but I see it constantly and when I still to stare, you drag me in and out of places, liminal spaces where you chatter at nothing while I am made to listen, spaces few and far between but unmistakably scattered through time, spaces I could stack on top of each other and manifest, an almost definition.
But that would get me out of it, and you couldn’t have that now, so here you are I suppose, chattering at nothing while I am made to listen.